What this very strange period ultimately proves is that Barack Obama, for all his talk about how \”Washington\” doesnt work, and all his endless praise for the essential goodness of the American people, has to know by now that we are in fact a very political people, easily manipulated, and carefully divided against each other, over and over again, and by people who know how. I never bought the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention \”We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America!\”, never bought a word of it. Now we are seeing it in its fundamental eclipse. Whatever Obamaism really is, it has run its course. The fight now is over what comes next.

Mr. Biden, who may run for president in 2016, is viewed warily by Mr. Obama’s circle not only for being a gaffe-prone “Uncle Joe,” but also for, in their minds, being overly consumed with his own political future.

In the 2014 fiscal year, which began at the start of this month, the federal deficit is expected to come in at just 3.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That’s down from 10.1 per cent of G.D.P. in 2009, when the Great Recession was at its height. And next fiscal year, the deficit will fall even further, to 2.1 per cent of G.D.P. No, you didn’t misread those figures. When President Obama says, as he did the other day, that the deficit has been cut in half, he is substantially understating what has happened in the past two or three years.

“We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride,” he went on, his baritone voice filling the room. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

He argued that “modest encroachments on privacy” — including keeping records of phone numbers called and the length of calls that can be used to track terrorists, though not listening in to calls — were “worth us doing” to protect the country.

As Barack Obama’s presidency lurched farther down the track of “I Never Thought I’d Be Doing [expletive deleted] Like This,” on Friday he in all seriousness tried to justify what even jaded wire service reporters were calling “sweeping” surveillance of Americans’ private lives.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Mr. Obama said.

Well, probably nobody. And, if they are, it’s under an entirely different part of the program.

For my part, I say, Fine. Have at my phone records. I make so few phone calls that all I would be giving away are the numbers of a few good Thai places near my house and a car service that stubbornly refuses to make reservations more than 15 minutes ahead of time.

The problem here is one of the governing’s oldest: The cat, if it wasn’t already out of the bag, sure as [expletive deleted] is now.

You should not think that recent events will simply cement a previous status quo in place, rather it moves us down a very particular path and probably makes the entire problem worse.

Mr. Obama, again in all seriousness, told reporters that spying on ordinary Americans is “not what this program is about.”

There he is wrong.

The worrisome thing isn’t that the government has gobbled up all those phone records, and whatever else. The worrisome thing is that it did it and no one even burped — not until now, anyway. Seemingly reasonable lawmakers and cabinet chiefs have tried to reassure Americans that, in all this snooping business, the government scrupulously followed the rules. Never mind that these are rules the government made up for itself.

Is it fear-mongering to ask where it will end? Maybe it is, but even the government’s shills, including one writing in The New York Times, couldn’t avoid pointing out the obvious.

On the surface, our system of checks and balances seems to be working. We cannot rule out the possibility that the voluminous records obtained by the government might, some day, be illegally misused. But there is no evidence so far that that has occurred.

In the end, who cares about phone records? As we all know from the First Law of Movie Technology, “Enemy of the State” Clause, any freaky spying technique you can properly portray in a film is probably a generation behind existing technology, anyway. And, I’m asking here, are there any serious criminals hatching schemes over a 4G network?

In his infuriating remarks on Friday, Mr. Obama briefly showed his human side when he, probably reading from a script, told reporters that he had had “a healthy skepticism” about the spying when he first learned of it. But it apparently didn’t last long.

“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Mr. Obama chirped.

And so here we are, snug up next to 100 percent security.

How does it feel? And, more to the point, was I right to order the chicken panang?

Footnotes

“And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.” – Exodus 32:14.

“Even then,
When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,
And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying
Of credulous hearts, in heaven -- such are but taking
Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.” -- Rupert Brooke, 1913

“Unconceivable, unbelievable; Grammar like a hammer information receivable; Sent by the Lord, here and abroad; with words well adored now they can't be ignored!” Run DMC, “Tougher Than Leather”

“...some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!’ And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.” -- 2 Kings 2:23-24

"You don't get it, do you? This isn't 'good cop, bad cop.' This is fag and New Yorker. You're in a lot of trouble."